The Seattle Central Library

Rem Koolhaas’ Central Library in Seattle blew me away when I first read about it back in February. Attempting to amalgamate media and rethink the role of the public library, the space takes on a function of great importance. Amy Murphy digs deeper into the philosophy behind the design, as well as contextualizing its purpose on a grander scale, in her recent essay The Seattle Central Library: Civic Architecture in the Age of Media. Well worth reading as it brings together several angles of argument and establishes a few new questions that are central to thinking about the role of architecture as conduit for information.